Musing about meal planning

Every time I have a spell of culinary activity, I think maybe I could develop an approach to meal planning that would actually be sustainable.  That is,

• I could manage to complete all steps of the process (planning, shopping, cooking, storing, cleanup) in a small enough timespan that it would be feasible to do this in a normal work week
• The result would be tasty enough and offer enough variety to keep us happy
• I'd feel good about the diet we were eating for short and long-term health goals

 Achieving all of that seems to be a project with a lot of complexity and moving parts.  There are certainly lots of resources and tools I could use for each stage of the process.

 Meal planning

• Capture ideas
• Individual recipes:  try things out and track what works (the lab journal)
• First time for a recipe
• Further experiments
• Final plan would include shopping list, portion size, notes for storage, etc
• Develop a template for quickly pulling together a week’s cooking
• The planned recipes - a template could help ensure that each week's cooking has a balance of
• Flavors - sweet dishes, tangy dishes, savory/rich dishes, spicy dishes, etc
• Ingredients 
• At least one thing a week of certain desirable foods like legumes
• At least one or two veggie recipes a week
• The related grocery lists
• The plan for using resources efficiently (eg start something in crockpot and then cook things in oven, pressure cooker, etc, while crock is perking along)

Shopping and food inventory

• Shopping would be easier if had standard inventory of basics, with straightforward approach to re-stocking as I use things.
• Organizing my panty would help, as it would be easier to see if an ingredient was running low.
• Explore using tools like online shopping and/or grocery store curbside pickup

Storing food

• Ideally would put up food in ready-to-serve format whenever possible, so can just heat up without further effort.

o   Explore what’s the best sort of container for that sort of thing.  Should be able to tolerate freezer and microwave conditions.

o   How to label things in a way that would survive the freezer but not last forever?